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The Lorax
The Lorax is a 2012 American computer-animated musical comedy film based on Dr. Seuss' children's book of the same name. It was produced by Illumination Entertainment and was released by Universal Pictures on March 2, 2012, the 108th birthday of Seuss, and was the first Universal Pictures film to have the 100th Anniversary logo. It is the second adaptation of the book, after the 1972 animated musical television special. It builds on the book by expanding the story of Ted, the boy who visits the Once-ler and was unnamed in the book and television special. The main cast includes Danny DeVito as the Lorax, Zac Efron as Ted, and Ed Helms as the Once-ler. New characters introduced in the film are Audrey, who is voiced by Taylor Swift, Aloysius O'Hare, voiced by Rob Riggle, and Grammy Norma, voiced by Betty White. Plot Theodore "Ted" Wiggins, an idealistic 12-year-old boy, lives in "Thneedville", a walled city that, aside from the citizens, is completely artificial: everything is made of plastic, metal, or synthetics. Ted sets out to find a real tree in order to impress Audrey, who Ted has a crush on. His energetic grandmother suggests he speak with the Once-ler about this, if he wishes to visit him, he must pay fifteen cents, a nail and a shell of great-great-great grandfather snail. When he sets off outside the city discovers that their city has been closed off from the outside world, which is a contaminated and empty wasteland. The Once-ler agrees to tell Ted about the trees if he listens to his story over multiple visits. Ted agrees, even after the mayor of Thneedville, Aloysius O'Hare, who is also the greedy proprietor of a bottled oxygen company, confronts the boy and pressures him to stay in town. Over the course of the film, Ted, with the encouragement of his grandmother, continues to sneak out of O'Hare's sight and learns more of the history of the trees. Over the visits, the Once-ler recounts the story of how he departed his family to make his fortune. In a lush Truffula Tree forest, he met the Lorax. He is a grumpy yet charming orange creature who served as guardian of the land. At first, the Once-ler had a plan to chop down the trees. Eventually, he promised not to chop another tree down. The young businessman's Thneed invention soon became a major success and the Once-ler's family arrived to participate in the business. Keeping his promise at first, the Once-ler continued Thneed production by harvesting the tufts themselves in a sustainable manner. Unfortunately, his greedy and lazy relatives convinced him to resume logging as a more efficient gathering method. Breaking his promise, the Once-ler's deforestation spiraled into a mass overproduction. Flush with wealth, the Once-ler rationalised his short sighted needs into arrogant self-righteousness and the helpless protests of the Lorax could not stop him. The Once-ler polluted the sky, river and landscape, until finally the last Truffula Tree fell outside, and the Once-ler realised what he had done while making the region uninhabitable with his business's pollution. With that, the Once-ler was left ruined and abandoned by his own family and became a recluse with the creation and isolation of Ted's town that came under young Mr. O'Hare's control, giving him the plan to sell fresh air with the absence of trees. Eventually, the Lorax sends the animals away before departing himself into the sky, leaving a stonecut word: "Unless". At the end of the story, the Once-ler understands the meaning behind the Lorax's last message, and gives Ted a gift of the last Truffula seed in hopes of planting it to regrow the forest. Ted's desire to impress Audrey is now a personal mission to remind his town of the importance of nature. O'Hare, determined not to have trees undercut his business, takes heavy-handed steps such as covering Audrey's nature paintings, closing off the door that Ted uses to see the Once-ler and forcibly searching Ted's room for the seed. Ted enlists his family and Audrey to help plant the seed, which has begun to germinate after coming into contact with water. O'Hare and his employees pursue the dissidents until they manage to elude him and reach the town center. Unfortunately, their attempt to plant the seed is interrupted by O'Hare who rallies the population to stop them. To convince them otherwise, Ted takes an earthmover and rams down a section of the city wall to reveal the environmental destruction outside. Horrified at the sight and inspired by Ted's conviction, the crowd defies O'Hare with his own henchmen expelling him from the town. The seed is planted, and Audrey kisses Ted on the cheek. Time passes and the land is starting to recover; the trees are regrowing, the animals are returning, and the redeemed Once-ler is happily reunited with the Lorax. Characters Reception Critical response The film received mixed reviews from critics, with criticism directed towards the film and its marketing as betraying the original message of the book. The film earned a "rotten" rating of 54% onRotten Tomatoes based on 145 reviews and an average rating of 6.1/10, with the critical consensus saying, "Dr. Seuss' The Lorax is cute and funny enough, but the moral simplicity of the book gets lost with the zany Hollywood production values." It also has a score of 46 on Metacritic based on 30 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews". New York magazine film critic David Edelstein on NPR's All Things Considered strongly objected to the movie, arguing that the Hollywood animation and writing formulas washed out the spirit of the book. "This kind of studio 3-D feature animation is all wrong for the material," he wrote. Demonstrating the poor way the book's text was used in the movie—how modern cultural styles were pasted over the text—in this excerpt from the review, Edelstein shows Audrey describing the truffula trees to Ted: :"the touch of their tufts was much softer than silk and they had the sweet smell of fresh butterfly milk" -- and (in the movie) Ted says, "Wow, what does that even mean?" and Audrey says, "I know, right?" So one of the only lines that is from the book, that does have Dr. Seuss' sublime whimsy, is basically made fun of, or at least, dragged down to Earth." Some conservatives have criticized the film for having a strong environmentalist message. Lou Dobbs, the host of Lou Dobbs Tonight on the Fox Business Network, has criticized the film as being "insidious nonsense from Hollywood," and accused "Hollywood of trying to indoctrinate children." The film also garnered some positive reviews, from critics such as Richard Roeper who called it a "solid piece of family entertainment". Roger Moore of the Pittsburgh Tribune called the film "a feast of bright, Seuss colors and wonderful Seuss design", and supported its environmentalist message. Box office The film has grossed $214,030,500 in North America, and $132,273,439 in other countries, for a worldwide total of $346,303,939. The film topped the North American box office with $17.5 million on its opening day (Friday, March 2, 2012). During the weekend, it grossed $70.2 million, easily beating the other new nationwide release, Project X ($21 million), and all other films. This was the biggest opening for an Illumination Entertainment film, and for a feature film adaptation of a book by Dr. Seuss, as well as the second largest for an environmentalist film. It also scored the third-best debut for a film opening in March, and the eighth-best of all time for an animated film. The Lorax stayed at #1 the following weekend, dropping 45% to $38.8 million and beating all new nationwide releases, including Disney's John Carter (second place). On April 11, 2012, it became the first animated film, in nearly a year, to gross more than $200 million in North America, since Disney's Tangled. On May 6, 2012, it surpassed Horton Hears a Who! to become the highest-grossing animated Dr. Seuss film, and the second overall just behind How the Grinch Stole Christmas. See also *Horton Hears a Who! *The Cat in the Hat *How the Grinch Stole Christmas External links *Official website *[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1482459/ The Lorax] at the Internet Movie Database *[http://www.allrovi.com/movies/movie/v495010 The Lorax] at AllRovi *[http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=lorax.htm The Lorax] at Box Office Mojo *[http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_lorax/ The Lorax] at Rotten Tomatoes *[http://www.metacritic.com/movie/dr-seuss-the-lorax The Lorax] at Metacritic